


Baby, Come Back To Bed

by QueenOfNewOrleans22



Category: Bon Jovi (Band)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluffy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:27:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27941495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenOfNewOrleans22/pseuds/QueenOfNewOrleans22
Summary: For the fifth time that week, Richie woke up to an empty bed.The sun was still resting beyond the horizon, not quite ready to make its appearance for the day, and the hotel room was cloaked in darkness, rendering him essentially blind as he sleepily reached over, hoping for a familiar slender body to cuddle, but there was nobody except a pillow and the crumbled sheets.
Relationships: Jon Bon Jovi/Richie Sambora
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	Baby, Come Back To Bed

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what I'm gonna do.  
> Sometimes, I'm just too numb.  
> And you gotta do anything to feel something, even if you promised never to do it again.  
> But it's all a lie, and I hate myself for that.  
> It's all very hopeless now.  
> If I'm alive, I'll check in tomorrow.

For the fifth time that week, Richie woke up to an empty bed. 

The sun was still resting beyond the horizon, not quite ready to make its appearance for the day, and the hotel room was cloaked in darkness, rendering him essentially blind as he sleepily reached over, hoping for a familiar slender body to cuddle, but there was nobody except a pillow and the crumbled sheets. 

Richie immediately woke up, blinking as the realization slowly seeped through his body and his mind, which hadn't quite woken up yet. The other side of the bed was empty, and Richie hadn't brought a girl back from the bar that night, which meant that Jon was supposed to be in bed, which also meant that the bed wasn't supposed to be empty, which lead to two conclusions. Either Jon was in the bathroom, or he wad working again. 

With a sigh that seemed to come from the very depths of Richie's soul, he rolled onto his back, arms askew, staring up at the blank ceiling. He didn't like being alone, especially when it was Jon's night to go to bed with him, but the concept wasn't new. 

In a strange way, Richie couldn't blame Jon - they were all stressed, and working themselves ragged over this tour. 

But, at the very least, Jon could lay down and sleep for more than twenty minutes without getting up to do some strange, innocuous thing. 

Richie turned his head to the side, catching site of movement, and, sure enough, there was a familiar mess of blonde hair and determined movements, a pen quickly sprawling along a notebook, the faint light of the lamp being the only offset in the darkness. 

The sight was endearing enough, but it also proved that Richie would have his work cut out for him if the band, this relationship - were to continue, which it would, he hoped. Every night, without fail, Jon managed to sneak out from their loving embrace, flick on a light, grab his notebook and pen, and would do something that would leave him exhausted and, yet, somehow still restless, the next morning. 

This band was their livelihood, their dream, their one shot at this twisted reality that they'd been thrust into, but it wasn't worth their sanity. 

Or, at least, that's what Richie thought as he slipped out of bed and shivered in the cold early morning. He walked across the room, biting back a yawn as he shuffled across the wooden floor until he was standing behind Jon, close enough that every breathe was audible in the silence. Richie knew that Jon must've been exhausted, because he usually would've noticed the other man as soon as his eyes opened. 

Richie looked at him for a minute - at the curve of his jaw, at the vague shakiness of his hand - and he reached out, pressing his fingers against Jon's bony shoulder in a feather light touch. Richie could feel the coarse material of the blonde's shirt, could hear the pen as it scratched along the paper, and it reminded him of that very first day, when he'd taken a million in one chance and kissed another man. 

Startled, Jon flinched, sending his pen onto the floor, his eyes wide in unspoken fear and shock. " _God,_ Rich." He gasped, pressing his hand against his heart, looking up at Richie's face, torn between a million emotions before finally settling on faint confusion. "What are you doing up?" He asked quietly, as if the people in the hotel next door could hear their voices.

"Well, you're not in bed." Richie said, one of his eyebrows raised curiously. "Not to mention the fact that, not only are you supposed to be asleep, but you're, what, writing lyrics?" He could hear the disbelief in his own tone. 

Jon looked betrayed, and his lips twisted into a frown that was already halfway into a scowl. "I get inspiration." He said, as if that could explain everything. 

Richie scoffed. "It's late! You can write down lyrics on the plane tomorrow, but, right now, you have to _sleep."_

"You're not my mother." Jon muttered, looking down at his knees. 

Pausing, Richie stared down at Jon, unsure of how to go on. "You're coming back to bed." He finally said. "Because Lord knows that, if you don't, then you're gonna raise Hell in the morning." 

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Jon asked, his voice rising in warning. 

Richie was tired, he was hungry, and, most of all, he just wanted to hold Jon in his arms and not have to worry about him sneaking away. He felt run ragged by everyone, most of all by management, and it annoyed him to no end to see that, instead of taking the time to rest, Jon was choosing to continue working, even though he always ended up doing the same thing the next day.

"It means that every time you refuse to sleep, then you always end up tearing everybody apart the next day." Richie said. "Because, you're never in your right mind when you don't sleep for five days straight." He enunciated the last words, hoping to knock them through Jon's stubborn skull. 

For a minute, Jon looked like he was about to lose a hold on his temper, but then he pursed his lips, and tilted his chin up. "I won't raise Hell about it." He said in a soft, but determined voice. "Just leave me alone." 

As if the words were final, Jon wrenched his arm from Richie's grip and turned back to his notebook, effectively rendering any further attempts to communicate useless. 

But Richie was stubborn, maybe not as much as Jon, but he was pretty damn close, and he never stopped running when he was so, so close to the finishing line. "Jon." He said. "C'mon, you can do this tomorrow." 

Far from understanding what Richie was trying to do, Jon only seemed to get further agitatrd by the reassurances. "Just go back to sleep." He replied. 

Richie glanced back at the bed, and then shook his head. "No, it's too empty without you." He said.

"Then hug a pillow." Jon said. 

"Nah, it's too soft." Richie frowned, wondering how he was going to work this one out without causing a huge problem. He started playing absently with Jon's hair, hoping that it would help lull him to sleep, or perhaps just incapacitate him long enough for Richie to drag him back to bed. "Doesn't sleep sound nice to you?" 

" _Rich,_ I'm fine. Go back to sleep." Jon was shaking his leg, now, which meant that he was trying to keep himself awake. "I'll sleep on the plane." 

"You can't sleep on planes." Richie said. "They shake too much, remember?" 

Jon sighed. "There's just too much work." He mumbled, vaguely motioning towards the notebook. "I can't sleep, because there's songs that need to be worked on and we need to get get fittings done and attend that photoshoot the day after tomorrow and Doc - " 

"Hey, hey, hey." Richie walked to the other side and crouched down in front of Jon, hoping that maybe, just maybe, he could still get through to the other side. "Who gives a fuck about Doc? He can handle things himself for five minutes while you sleep, and if he can't, then we need a new agent." 

"We already do." Jon whined. "And somebody needs to make the arrangements for Australia because the tour manager got blackout drunk and isn't worth shit." 

Richie shushed him. "Okay, we can find somebody that can do that. Australia's in two months, anyways. We'll be fine, okay?" 

"No, we _won't_!" Jon hissed. "We won't be fine. This'll just be another stupid dream and we'll go back to living at our parents houses in Jersey, selling women's shoes because we were too dumb to plan ahead and we invested everything in becoming rockstars but we'll just be another forgotten band that some kid finds in an old record shop in thirty years because everybody forgot about us!" He buried his face in his hands. 

"No, don't think about that again." Richie sighed. "Listen, this may work out, this may not work out. It's all up in the air. But here's the thing that you have to realize, otheriwse you're gonna drive yourself crazy - if we fail, and that's a huge _if,_ then its not gonna be because of Tico or Dave or Alec or I, and it especially won't be because of you, because you've been working your ass off trying to make this whole thing work. It'll be because we have shitty management and a bad agent. Not because of our music or our work ethic or whatever, it'll be _them,_ you understand?" 

Jon nodded, blinking slowly as he looked away and his gaze became focused on the wall. "You bastard." He snarled when he realized that Richie's hand was still entangled in his hair, a response that wasn't really effective because his eyes were slowly closing. 

Laughing, Richie stood up, stumbling a little as his knees got used to the sensation of standing upright again. "Yeah, yeah, you can get your revenge tomorrow. C'mon, now, let's go to bed." He held out his hands in offering, and Jon took them. 

"You know all the right moves, huh?" Jon asked with an accompanying yawn as he stood up and followed Richie back to bed, to the place that, after a hard month's work, he was always bound to come back to. 

Richie gently pushed Jon down onto the bed, pulling the blankets out from underneath him so that he could place them over Jon. "You bet, baby. That's why they call me the king of swing." He walked over to the other side of the bed and slipped in. 

"Mhm." Jon hummed, allowing himself to lay down when Richie took him into his arms, to a place that he was always meant to be, whether it be on a plane or on a bus or in bed or after a long day's work selling women's shoes if their dream didn't work out. "I love you." He whispered, like a secret that couldn't be divulged.

Smiling, Richie assured himself that, even if their dream didn't quite work out, then at least he could have love to fall back on. "I love you, too." 


End file.
